h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi! Just want to wish you good luck with the garden biz. Small specialist nurseries and consultants have taken off like wild fire in Ontario the past few years. When we came to Canada in '71, horticulture was just a rumour. In fairness, there were some fine gardens then; but gardening didn't have the mass appeal it enjoys now. As a gardener, myself, I always try to do business with small independants. They are often far more interesting; and usually damn nice people too. Anyway, best of luck!

Thanks for the message John-the-Gardener.
I did actually go and look at your home page because I did
what you probably did and searched for Garden/etc.
That's how I found you.
Is the company you work for a landscaping company
or is it a corporation that employs you to do its landscaping?

I will have to try and work up a page on some sort of garden topic.

I'm glad you realise that small business can give personalised service.
That's what a lot of our wandering clients tell us they like about us.
We also have a more idiosyncratic selection of plants than the big nurseries do.
We still order bulk supplies for landscaping jobs as required.
I spend most of my time designing at the moment and I do that from home
hence the temptation to check out the net from time to time.

I wonder what differences there are between your "standard" landscaping plants
and ours. In Melbourne the current craze is for box or lonicera hedges with formal things like camellias
and gardenias and topiary! One tries to fight it, but I had to do a garden like this recently.
I prefer the more unusual and am into grasses and succulents (current favourite Japanese blood grass)
but done in formal courtyard settings.
Cheers
Gillian

Box and Lonicera? Well, I am surprised. I would have guessed that the trend would be more along the lines of xeriscape planting; all the rage in the US; and catching on here. Still, you're probably miles ahead, and that's passe for you. Corporate landscaping here favours Spirea bumalda cultivars and Prunus cistena, usually clipped into balls. Ugh! The present craze in the home landscape is for quaried limestone blocks and large sections of herbaceous groundcovers, such as Ajuga or Pachysandra. Ornamental grasses are quite popular too.

I do my gardening for a Municipality on the north shore of Lake Ontario, near Toronto. Apart from the typical where-and-tear of public gardens, Canada Geese are a real problem for me. I prefer a Cottage garden, hodge-podge look; because it tends to stand up to the geese, and what damage they do inflict is less obvious than in a more formal layout.

Xeriscaping is an issue much discussed, but only a small percentage of home gardeners seem to want to do much about it.
In Melbourne most want to have Green and Pleasant gardens just like in England.
We do have reasonable winter rain here to support gardens but lawns are a problem in summer which is dry.
We also have "water restrictions" often in summer when the reservoirs have dropped too low. This means no fixed sprinklers and having to water by hand.
You'd think that this would force a bit more thought about the types of plants used.
What plants are being used in your part of the world for xeriscaping. Do you have any Australian native plants available?

I've been trying to think whether I've seen an honest to goodness xeriscape around here. There is a definate trend towards the aesthetic; but I don't think there has really been a palette of plants introduced to support it.

There are a lot of new residential gardens featuring stone mulch in a deserty kind of layout; but paradoxically, as often as not there will also be a lawn and pop-up irrigation. Yucca glauca and Y. filamentosa are quite popular; as are ornamental grasses (especially Miscanthus spp.) and native plants like Coreopsis, Rudbeckia, and Echinacea.

I can't think of any native Australians in common use. Perhaps there are, but I don't recognize them as such.

At work, I've started two new herb gardens, sort of xeriscapish ( the girl who worked with me last summer said they were more like "Xena-scapes"!), featuring sages, mints, and thymes.

Are you working on anything interesting at the present? Do you train the topiaries, you mentioned yourself?

Cheers! John